Its panting leaves, and waves its azure curls;
Or spreads in gay undress its lucid form
To meet the sun, and shuts it to the storm; 10
While in green veins impassion'd eddies move,
And Beauty kindles into life and love.
How the first embryon-fibre, sphere, or cube,
Lives in new forms,--a line,--a ring,--a tube;
Closed in the womb with limbs unfinish'd laves, 15
Sips with rude mouth the salutary waves;
Seeks round its cell the sanguine streams, that pass,
And drinks with crimson gills the vital gas;
Weaves with soft threads the blue meandering vein,
The heart's red concave, and the silver brain; 20
Leads the long nerve, expands the impatient sense,
And clothes in silken skin the nascent Ens.
Erewhile, emerging from its liquid bed,
It lifts in gelid air its nodding head;
The lights first dawn with trembling eyelid hails, 25
With lungs untaught arrests the balmy gales;
Tries its new tongue in tones unknown, and hears
The strange vibrations with unpractised ears;
Seeks with spread hands the bosom's velvet orbs.
With closing lips the milky fount absorbs; 30
And, as compress'd the dulcet streams distil,
Drinks warmth and fragrance from the living rill;--
Eyes with mute rapture every waving line,
Prints with adoring kiss the Paphian shrine,
And learns erelong, the perfect form confess'd, 35
Ideal Beauty from its mother's breast.
Now in strong lines, with bolder tints design'd,